Thursday, April 5, 2012
Imagined reality
Before we find out about Jim's (Matthew Goode) death, we see George's (Colin Firth) imagined discovery of his car crash in the snow. We cut into a wide establishing shot of the area, smoke from the car and Jim's blood bringing life to the frame. Then George enters. As he moves towards Jim's lifeless body, we dolly behind him, the surrounding snow-covered landscape almost surreal--probably indicative of the sequence's fabricated reality within the film. When I witnessed the actual occurrence of George hearing about Jim's death, a much more bleak, uneventful, anticlimactic experience in which he simply receives a phone call, I instantly recalled the snow car-crash sequence and adapted this moment to the rest of the film, especially whenever the hue of the film changed (which happened a lot, and more consistently towards the end of the film). Most of what happens in the film--film color, abstract/surreal sequences, flashbacks--resembles George's distorted view of reality. Most of life is grim, mundane, lifeless. When he becomes elated, so too does his surroundings, his encounters with people, his attitude. Throughout the film, whenever a change in one of these elements occurred, I began to think about how it related to the entire film, how it related to all of the elements of the film, and how it related to Tom Ford and his views expressed in the film. These changes in George's psyche emphasize his isolation from society as a homosexual, and also as having lost a loved one. Everyone continues life as though everything were perfect, including and especially in the scene in which George drives by the "perfect" suburban family--a daughter and son playing in the yard, the father on his way to work, the mother going about doing household tasks. His existence as an isolated figure distort his psyche in multiple ways, of which we are subtly experiencing throughout the film.
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Doug,
ReplyDeleteI really like the approach you took to looking at this film. The change in colors that you noticed was one of the main things that I noticed as well. This fading in and out was a very interesting cinematic technique. I had not before made the connection to the opening scene but I really liked how you did. I suppose that that scene stands as the stark opposite of the most saturated scenes. Anyway, of those color-changing types of moments, the one that really stood out to me the most was when Kenny approached George's car outside of the school. At first when George was slightly annoyed by Kenny's presence Kenny was a more faded color but as the conversation turned and began to make George happy, the colors instantly brightened and became much more saturated. This is a great example of George's feelings of isolation shifting as he began to sense companionship in Kenny. You also mentioned the "picture perfect family." We were told in class that Tom Ford draws a lot of his inspiration from his magazine work. The scene panning over the neighbors’ home absolutely looked like a page advertisement straight out of a home and garden type of magazine. This is a good support for what you said since I definitely agree that Ford expressed his own personal views and interests throughout the film. Furthermore, the scene was in slow motion and featured bright colors. Since we were seeing everything through the perspective of George's eyes, this sort of made me wonder if he was looking at them with slight envy. He was seeing their perfect lives: how they had no need to hide. Perhaps he was also realizing that he would never have what they did...(even though he didn't truly want that exact thing.) Also within that scene, I noticed a beautiful white flower. I have been trying to figure out what type of flower it was to search for symbolism (no success). Either way, the color white often represents purity another possible interpretation was that George was seeing the purity and innocence and the lack of pain or loss that the family possessed. Or perhaps there is a connection between the stark white color of the flower and that of the snow in the opening scene! The possibilities are endless.
-Aliza Bresnick